There's always been good business predicting the end of the world. The "end" of the "world" is pretty badly defined by most supernatural predictions. The rapture, for instance, is really just the beginning of the end, and signals civilization being sent back to the Stone Age for a bit. During all this The Chosen are whisked up to heaven. Meanwhile, predictions of the end of the world in 2012 were wide-ranging, from a comet just tearing Earth in half (the rest of the universe spinning on as usual) to the complete and total end of everything ever. The latter is less scary because it's not like anything will be around afterwards to care.

In the case of some of the science-based predictions for how the universe will go on according to our knowledge of physics, there's no "end" as such. Matter and energy still exist, but in their lowest energy and most uniform state: the rub being that this state precludes the interactions needed to produce emergent structures. This includes stars, planets, and intelligent entities capable of experiencing the universe.

Here are some examples, with the predicted date of the end of all things.

Zoroastrianism claims that the end of the world will happen when a comet, called Gochihr, strikes the earth. It will cause all the world's metals to melt and will burn up the world. At the same time, sinners and the pious will pass through this river of molten metal. Sinners will have their sins burnt away and the pious will feel like they're "passing through warm milk."[2]

Norse myths say that Ragnarök will be the battle between the gods, killing all but two of the humans, who will then repopulate the earth.

A number of scientific disasters have been suggested throughout the years. For example: epidemics,[3] various asteroids/comets, super-volcanoes[4] and global warming.

Muslims believed in the Qiyamah (Last Judgement) during which time Jesus[6] will come to earth, end all wars, and kill ad-Dajjal — the Muslim anti-Christ. Then every person who ever lived will be bodily resurrected, before being judged by God. The faithful go to heaven, and the rest to hell. Apparently there's also room for some "People of the Book," i.e. Jews and Christians, though hopefully there won't be any wars between the lot in heaven.

The "Great Disappointment": William Miller predicts the end would come in 1843... then 1844... oh. His many thousands of followers were not put off by this utter failure, and some became the Seventh Day Adventists. They're still waiting.

1865: predicted by Edward Bishop Elliott, a Victorian Biblical scholar; he later revised this to 1941.[11][12]

1881: according to an 1862 edition of the prophecies of Mother Shipton, who allegedly wrote "The world to an end shall come, In eighteen hundred and eighty one."[13]

2008 — whenever she dies: Sarah Palin: believes she is of the "Final Generation" and will see the End Times during her lifetime.[citation needed]

2008 — whenever it shuts down: The Large Hadron Collider will destroy the world with black holes, strangelets or something similarly scary and sciencey.[35] (You can keep up to date with whether this has happened yet here.[36])

2009: David Wilkerson: Earth-shattering calamity engulfing the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America experiencing riots and blazing fires.[37]

2011: Harold Camping tries again: Third Second coming/rapture. May 21st, to be precise.[38] He put up billboards![39] Later postponed to October 21st, but again nothing came of it. Camping might hold on to the money people sent him if he were not dead now, though he evidently blew a bundle on billboard advertisements.[40] though followers were encouraged to drain their savings for Camping's campaign funds and many are deeply disappointed.[41]

2012: But of course! Un-naturally failed apocalypse, NASA pushed away space rock expected to hit in series of attempts to bombard asteroids in previous years.[42] (They even did this to the moon!) The following trail fell to/passed Earth in early 2013.[43] ;)

2014: World War III, resurrected Nostradamus prophecy of a fire in the North for the reference of the end of the age of the fifth sun,[47] believed to be a specific Northern region of a country, current speculation is North Korea, as relative to the resolution of a Pope prediction.[48] Oh, and the Rapture. [49] And a giant asteroid hitting the Caribbean.[50]

between April 2014 and October 2015: A tetrad of lunar eclipses (or blood moons) will signal the start of the end times, according to megachurch pastor John Hagee. [51]

2015: September 23rd (some references give a margin of September 18th to September 25th) Asteroid.[55]

2015: October 7th. eBible Fellowship, an organization vaguely related to the late-Harold Camping, is confident they've got the date right this time.[56]

2016: Tom Wattkins[57]: He had a vision of the Great tribulation claiming to have met the beast of revelation, etc. Turns out the same day is a solar eclipse.[58], though of course he'll mention that.[57]

2016: May 16, Pastor Richardo Salazar was allegedly told by God that an asteroid fully made of ice, with a 9km diameter, traveling at 30,000km per hour would strike earth killing 1,200 million people. As you probably can tell, that definitely happened and those totally dead 1,200 million people will be forever missed.[60]

2016: June 3-4, Modern scholars got the Mayan date wrong. It was never 2012, rather it was June 2016 and there are plenty of numbers involved.[61]

2016: June 14-August 19, according to this super-reliable-super-honest-super-definitely-NOT-bullshiting "NASA scientist", there was meant to be a magnetic reversal between June and August which would cause the Van Allen belt to fall killing 80% of life on Earth. He got this information from aliens via HAARP. Yup, aliens told our good 'ol uncle Dr. Sal that the sky is falling.[62]

2016: October 31st, Walid Shoebat alleges that the world is "100% certain" to end on this exact arbitrary nutjob date. As the basis for this claim, he refers to his own science of "Futurology 101".[63]

2016, Fall: Bible student and computer scientist Nora Roth on MarkBeast.com claims as much through a lot of numerology surrounding seventy "sevens".[64]

According to current models, the Sun is expected to increase in luminosity by 10% in the next 800 million years. This will cause several changes to the climate that will make the continued existence of life on Earth impossible, starting with photosynthetic organisms and eventually killing off all life.[79]

The galaxy Andromeda (currently 2.5 million light years away) is expected to collide and merge with our galaxy, the Milky Way. This is unlikely to have much of an effect on whatever life is around, as galaxies are mostly empty space, although for any given planet, there is a tiny chance that its orbit could be disrupted due to gravitational tugs from passing stars.

5 billion years from now: According to accepted models of stellar evolution, the Sun will run out of hydrogen in its core to fuse into helium and will transition to a red giant as a result, expanding massively. The Sun will swallow Mercury and Venus, and may get large enough to swallow Earth as well. Even if it doesn't, Earth will be roasted to a cinder crisp.[80] One school of thought predicts that the drag from the Sun's outer gas envelope will cause the Earth to spiral into the Sun, but as with all things scientific, there is another school of thought that says this won't happen.[81] If it isn't swallowed, Earth will likely get flung out into interstellar space due to tidal interactions with the Sun and the Sun's gradual loss of mass once it enters the red giant stage.

20 billion years from now: If the current rate of expansion of the universe grows, in 20 billion years, the universe could be expanding so rapidly that atoms will no longer be able to hold on to their electrons. This predicted event is known as the "Big Rip." Blame dark energy.

3×1043 years from now: estimated maximum time for all nucleons in the observable universe to decay, if protons are unstable. Whether they are is currently an unresolved question in physics. Exasecond and longer[wp] and Future of an expanding universe[wp] have a pile of similarly apocalyptic events that actually have some scientific basis. This is the Total Existence Failure of the entire universe, anything complex enough to be considered life that would care about it would likely have evaporated to nothing long before this. Out of all the above, this is the most likely.

The heat death of the universe[wp] is a scientific prediction that eventually the universe will expand so much it will no longer contain any thermodynamic free energy with which to do work. At this point the universe will be cold, dark, and essentially empty forever. That is, unless quantum fluctuations or some other phenomena eventually cause something to occur, like a new Big Bang. Forever is a long time, and this kind of physics is poorly understood at present.

↑ In his book Ein Rechenbuchlin vom EndChrist. Apocalyps in Apocalypsim, he put the date and time at 3rd October 1533 at 8 am. When the world did not end, he was ejected from his quarters and flogged in the streets. (Eeek.) [1]

↑ 19.019.1Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God, Brooklyn: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1966. P. 29. says Fall 1975. Pp. 27-28 of the same book uses a different date counting method and says 1997. Both are based on estimates of when the earth was created of 4004 BCE and 4026 BCE respectively. So they hedged their bets but you still have to believe in YEC to believe either one.

↑[7] Christian group predicts the world will be 'annihilated' on Wednesday: Over a week after blood moon doomsday forecasts were proven wrong, eBible Fellowship leader Chris McCann says ‘the world will pass away’ on 7 October] by Adam Gabbatt (Tuesday 6 October 2015 07.30 EDT) The Guardian.